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Knowledge Management is one of the
emerging disciplines that aims to capitalize
on the intellectual capital of an organization. The concept of
knowledge represents a mix of framed experience,
values, contextual information, and expert insight
that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.
In organizations, it often becomes embedded, not only in documents or repositories, but also
in organizational routines, processes, practices
and norms.
The concept of knowledge management emerged in the mid-1980s. By the 1990s,
new technologies, such as Internet, group support systems, search engines, portals, and data
and knowledge warehouses, as well as the
application of statistical analysis and AI techniques,
enriched this domain and helped in making it a
buzzword. Nowadays majority of Fortune 500 companies
and almost 100% of leading software companies has appointed a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO)
for developing a knowledge sharing framework and culture in the organization.
When we talk about the role of knowledge management (KM) in Software Industry, It is
not absolutely different than other knowledge intensive business. Some of the problems
that software organizations encounter are very
similar to those faced by other organizations, so
general purpose KM systems can be used to address
them; but other issues are very specific, so
special systems are required. The key difference exists
in decision-making process of Software companies and that of other production or
manufacturing companies. In manufacturing companies, once
a decision is taken by top management, the others just comply with it.
However, in software companies, a large amount of decision making process is involved
at every stage of software development. Another
key difference is associated with the volume and versatility of the knowledge base. Here
knowledge required to handle operations of other
industries remains limited to the specific domain only
but team members of software projects not only
deal with frequent changes and upgradations in IT
tools and techniques, but also a number of complex business processes of their clients. |
